It is nearly always desirable to mount a cine or television camera on a mounting head carried by a suitable support (for example a dolly tripod or the like) so that the camera can be swivelled or pivoted relative to the support providing a panning, tilting or scanning motion in one plane or in two mutually perpendicular planes.
Panning refers to changing the vertical orientation of the camera lens with its axis moving in a horizontal plane, tilting refers to changing the vertical orientation of the camera lens with its axis moving in a vertical plane and spin refers to rotation of the camera about the lens axis.
If the axis of rotation passes through a point close to the lens of the camera called the nodal point, to a viewer of pictures taken the camera's position will appear unchanged during rotation. If rotation takes place about an axis not passing through this point both the orientation and the position of the camera will appear to be changing. It is thus often preferred that the mounting head be such that that panning and tilting rotation take place about axes passing through the nodal point of the camera.
There are conditions where mounting a camera on a head and providing the operator with unobstructed safe access to carry out tilting, panning etc. is extremely difficult. It then becomes desirable to use a head that can be controlled by an operator or by a computer whose location is not restricted to the immediate head area.
Further, it is preferred for panning and tilting to be available through a full 360 degrees. Providing for rotation about axes passing through the nodal point of a camera to be mounted and/or for full 360 degree panning and tilting means that the mounting head has to be made larger and heavier, than if it had to meet less stringent requirements.
For applications in which compactness and light weight are of greater importance, a small, light mounting head may be best even if it does not have full 360 degree panning and tilting abilities, or pivots on an axis not passing through the nodal point.
A user is likely to have different requirements for different applications. Existing remote controlled heads require the user to have one which will not be the best for some requirements or else to go to the expense of having several such heads. The user may not even find the type of head he would prefer available on the market, and the cost of constructing a head for a specific application is often likely to be too expensive and time consuming.
It is the object of the invention to provide a mounting head which is more versatile than those hitherto made, while yet being economic to manufacture and easy to handle.